


Christmas Shopping

by whichclothes



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-24
Updated: 2010-04-24
Packaged: 2017-10-09 03:03:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/82329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whichclothes/pseuds/whichclothes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set 9 years after AtS ended and ignoring the comics. Spike has a lonely existence in the Heartland until he runs into someone familiar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Christmas Shopping

**Author's Note:**

> My entry for [](http://community.livejournal.com/noel_of_spike/profile)[**noel_of_spike**](http://community.livejournal.com/noel_of_spike/) . Holy cow, I wrote Spiley. Comments are cherished.

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[christmas shopping](http://whichclothes.livejournal.com/tag/christmas%20shopping), [spike/riley](http://whichclothes.livejournal.com/tag/spike/riley)  
  
---|---  
  
_**Christmas Shopping (1/1)**_  
**Title: **Christmas Shopping   
**Pairing:** Spike/Riley   
**Rating:** NC-17   
**Disclaimer: **I'm not Joss   
**Warnings:** slash, angst   
**Summary:** Set 9 years after AtS ended and ignoring the comics. Spike has a lonely existence in the Heartland until he runs into someone familiar.   
**Author's Note: **My entry for [](http://community.livejournal.com/noel_of_spike/profile)[**noel_of_spike**](http://community.livejournal.com/noel_of_spike/) . Holy cow, I wrote Spiley. Comments are cherished.   


**  
Christmas Shopping**

 

Spike hated this place no matter the season. It smelled of chemicals and cheap fabrics and wet nappies, and it was filled with the sounds of screeching children and humans yapping away on their mobile phones. He knew he looked like death under the fluorescent lights. It was even worse in December, though. Everywhere the eye wandered were gaudy bits of shite in red and green and silver and gold, and the sound system played tinny carols. The children squawked even more shrilly and their parents yelled right back, using their overloaded shopping trolleys like battering rams to force their way through the aisles.

Sometimes, Spike was certain that WalMart at Christmas was worse than any hell that awaited him.

But a bloke had to buy things now and then, like cigarettes and whiskey and hair bleach and Season 4 of Supernatural on DVD. And if that bloke was a vampire, he was limited to shops that were open late, and in this benighted bit of the heartland, that meant WalMart.

He stood in the electronics section, idly considering whether to purchase Guitar Hero for his Wii and wondering what sorts of parents decided that taking their young offspring shopping at two in the morning was a good idea. With a sigh, he decided against the game. His wallet was growing rather lean and he didn’t much fancy the idea of having to find a job again. There were a limited number of positions available to him—mostly, he worked as a bouncer in demon bars—and he’d rather spend his nights watching telly or reading or trying to drink away his memories.

With these less-than-pleasant thoughts in his head, Spike turned, meaning to go find some JD and get the hell out of here. But his head was down, and he walked directly into a large, very solid man. “Sorry,” Spike muttered without looking up, and moved to go around the bloke. But a huge hand suddenly clutched his shoulder hard enough to make him wince.

“Spike?!” said a voice he hadn’t heard in a decade.

Spike’s head jerked up. He hissed and took a step back, wrenching himself out of the man’s grip and nearly stumbling over the bottom of the shelf. “Bloody hell!”

“What the fuck are you doing here?” the man demanded. He reached into his fleece-lined denim jacket, as if to grab a weapon.

Spike held up his right hand, in which he held a plastic package of three black t-shirts. “Shopping, berk. You?”

“I was thinking about what to get my nephew for Christmas. He says he wants—Jesus Christ, Spike, why are you _here_?”

Spike looked into the man’s face. It was still handsome, but less boyish than before. His hair still flopped in his eyes a bit, but now those eyes looked tired, the skin beneath smudged with dark shadows. His small beard appeared more like a failure to shave than a deliberate decision, and it was flecked with gray. His brows were furrowed in confusion. Under his jacket he wore a greenish t-shirt that hung shapelessly on him and a pair of worn jeans with a hole in one knee.

Spike squinted at him for a moment longer. “How about we discuss it over a drink?” he finally asked.

After a very long pause, the other man nodded. “Okay,” said Riley Finn.

 

The bars had already closed. Finn said he was living in a trailer on his uncle’s farm several miles outside of town. But the roads were icy and the tires on Spike’s car were fairly bald, so, with a feeling of resignation, Spike invited Finn to his own flat, only a mile away. Finn was driving a battered old F-150, but he laughed when he saw Spike unlock his own car. “A Hyundai? You’re driving a Hyundai?”

Spike glowered at him. “It runs, doesn’t it?” Well, most of the time, anyway. Actually, the car was crap, but it had been cheap and it didn’t use too much petrol.

Finn followed him through the light snow flurries and they both parked in front of Spike’s building. Spike gathered his plastic sacks in his hands—a case of Heineken in one, his t-shirts and a fifth of JD in the other—and gestured with his head for Finn to walk with him.

Spike had what was euphemistically called a garden-level flat. That meant that it was on the bottom of the building, several steps below ground level. There was a small window high in the living room wall, and another in the bedroom, each of which was just inches above the pavement. They would have given a charming view of people’s feet if Spike hadn’t covered them with sheets of thick cardboard.

Finn looked around at Spike’s furniture. It came from thrift stores and nothing matched, but it was comfortable enough. Finn settled on a light blue recliner with a badly mended tear across the seat. Spike fetched a pair of glasses, poured them each a good measure of whiskey, and sat opposite his guest on a threadbare sofa he’d covered with a red sheet. They each took a long sip and gazed at the amber liquid as if it had all the answers.

“You gonna tell me why you’re here?” Finn finally asked.

Spike shrugged. “No reason, really. Was passing through on the freeway between nowhere and nowhere else, decided it was as good a place as any to pass some time.”

“Yeah, but what are you _doing_?”

“Not eating the locals, if that’s got you worried. Haven’t done that for ages.”

Finn looked at him uncertainly. “Yeah, I remember. Buffy said you’d got yourself a soul. I wouldn’t have helped get that chip out otherwise.”

“That fucking chip was an abomination, and it was….” Spike remembered the pain and gritted his teeth. It wasn’t the worst pain he’d felt, before or since, but it had made him so bloody helpless. And at the end there, when it had been malfunctioning, and he never knew when the agony would strike…he would have dusted himself if the soldiers hadn’t removed the thing.

Finn squirmed uncomfortably. “So when Buffy called about the chip, I sort of had the impression that you and her were…kind of an item.”

“An item?” Spike cocked his brow.

“I thought you were fucking, okay?”

“We weren’t. Least, not then.”

“Are you now?”

Spike laughed, harshly and without humor. “I haven’t seen or spoken with her since Sunnydale. Nearly ten years ago, innit? I don’t know whether she even knows I exist.”

“Oh.”

They were both silent a while more, drinking. Spike refilled their glasses, and then Finn asked, “So what does a vampire with a soul do? I mean, I know about Angel, but—“

“Angel’s dust.”

“Oh,” Finn repeated. “Um, how?”

“There was a battle. Everyone…everyone died in that battle.” He looked into his glass again. “Everyone except me.”

“So now?” Finn’s voice was soft.

“I’m not the pouf. Not going to swish about, spouting off about my sodding redemption. I saved the world more than once, and if that isn’t enough atonement then I’m lost anyhow.”

“If you’re not playing rescue hero, then what?”

Spike shrugged again. “I get by. I…I don’t know. I exist. Isn’t that what most of the world does? Just gets through, from day to day?”

Finn didn’t answer. He swirled his JD a bit and shifted around so his legs were crossed and he stared at one of the few decorations in the flat, a Sex Pistols poster Spike had tacked up on the wall.

“What are _you_ doing here, then?” Spike finally asked. “Still with the black helicopter lot?”

“No.” Finn drained his glass and reached for the bottle.

“And the missus?” He remembered Buffy crying in his arms once about lost opportunities; she hadn’t noticed that every word twisted his dead heart like a corkscrew.

“Left me.” He lifted his refilled glass and motioned as if to make a toast. “I have a little drinking problem.”

That didn’t surprise Spike, actually. He knew Finn had been addicted to the bite for a time, and he’d sensed the darkness beneath the man’s good old boy surface years ago. It was the black hole of need, a chasm that Spike himself was quite familiar with. If it wasn’t filled by love, it must be filled by something else—violence or alcohol or drugs.

“And you’re back on the farm now.”

“I help out a little. There’s really not enough work to support me. So I fill in down at the Purina plant. I move pallets of dog food.” He chuckled drily. “I get through, day to day.”

They emptied the bottle and then turned to the beer. Spike switched on the telly and they stared at it, bleary-eyed, until Finn slumped and began to snore. Spike stood and stretched and turned off the telly. There was a half-full can of Heineken near Finn’s enormous foot, and Spike picked it up and put it on the kitchen counter. He glanced at Finn one more time. The git looked almost innocent like that, with his mouth gaping and his eyes moving beneath closed lids. For a moment, Spike wondered whether he looked innocent when he slept as well. With a quiet snort, he wandered off to bed.

***

 

Spike didn’t wake until late afternoon. He meandered into the loo and splashed some water in his face, but it was only when he was in the kitchen that he remembered Finn. There was no sign of the man. Back in his trailer, probably, or perhaps hauling kibble. Hell, maybe he was back at WalMart, shopping for Christmas pressies.

There was one container left of cow’s blood in the fridge. Spike heated it in the microwave and drank it. He’d have to get some more. One of the perks about being in a place like this was plenty of slaughterhouses and butchers willing to make financial arrangements with the pale Englishman.

It wasn’t snowing anymore, but the sky was a uniform leaden gray that promised more flurries soon. It also allowed Spike to go outside well before sunset, and so he did, choosing to walk instead of driving. Shoulders hunched and his hands shoved deeply in his pockets, as if that did any good, he made his way downtown to a coffee house he fancied. He usually went there only at night, and it was diverting to see the place filled with politicians and salesmen and professors, instead of the pierced, dyed, and tattooed student crowd that came later. He sat in front of one of the big windows, nursing a black mug of Darjeeling, and watched people slog tiredly through the slush on their way to their cars. Everything was gray, it seemed—the sky, the ground, the buildings, the people.

After a few hours, Spike walked to campus and into the library. He had a favorite corner in the literature section, deep in the stacks, and he sat on the floor for a while and read books nobody had checked out since the 1950’s.

Finally, he walked home, and he climbed into his car and drove to the edge of town, where the night watchman at an abattoir was waiting for him with three gallon-sized plastic jugs full of red fluid. Spike gave him a fifty dollar bill and stuffed the jars into the passenger-side footwell. He drove home and drank a bit more blood and sat motionless in front of the flickering screen until his eyes felt grainy and he went to bed.

***

 

Three nights later he was watching a Tarantino film on HBO when there was a knock at his door. It took him a moment to realize what the sound was—since he’d moved in nine months ago, he didn’t think anyone had come to his door at all.

When Spike swung the door open, there was Riley Finn, big as ever, his cheeks red and his nose dripping from the cold. He raised the paper sack in his hands a bit. “Drank all your booze last time. Thought I’d reciprocate.”

Silently, Spike let him in.

They drank for a time without speaking more than a word or two. Then they discovered there was nothing worth watching on the telly, and Spike pulled out his Wii. They spent the next several hours killing zombies and stealing cars, and Spike realized at some point that the unfamiliar sound he was hearing was his own laughter.

When they put down the controllers, Spike tilted his head at Finn, who was sitting next to him on the couch, radiating heat from his big body. “Why’d you come, Finn? You could have drunk alone.”

Finn looked down at his feet. “Maybe I’m tired of drinking alone.”

“All right. But why me?”

Finn slumped back onto the sofa cushion. “I used to love it here, when I was a kid. I grew up in Iowa, you know—my folks’ place was there—but I’d come here in the summers to stay with Uncle Bob and Aunt Marian, and I’d hang out with my cousins and we’d ride our bikes and swim in the pond and catch fireflies and go to the drive-in. It was great. But now…I don’t know. It’s not home anymore, not really. I’m a stranger.”

“You grew up.”

“Yeah, so did my cousins, and they’re all happy with going to church and fixing their cars and planning vacations and having kids. Normal stuff. But me, it’s like I’m in a play. Acting a part. I don’t fit here anymore. Not after what I’ve seen, what I’ve done. I don’t fit anywhere, really.”

“And you reckoned I knew how that felt.”

Finn looked at him intently. “Don’t you?”

“’M not meant to fit into middle America, am I? I’m a demon.”

Finn jumped to his feet so quickly it startled Spike. “Yeah, you’re a demon. But you’ve got a soul, and you were human once. Don’t you miss that stuff? Family and, and _belonging_?”

Spike didn’t tell him that he’d never belonged anywhere, not really, not even when he was human. Instead, he narrowed his eyes. “You want to know what I miss? Killing. The feeling of power you get when you hold a life in your hands. The taste of hot blood, pumped into my mouth by a beating heart. The feel of a squirming body beneath mine.”

If he expected disgust or horror as a reaction, he didn’t get it. Finn only looked at him with a piercing gaze and asked, “So why don’t you do it anymore? I mean, you _could_, right?”

“Could. But all the joy’d be out of it, with the soul burning at me like a fucking cross in my heart.” He turned his head away. “You can’t know what it’s like.”

Finn knelt before him, searching out Spike’s eyes with his. “But I do. That’s the thing. Um, not the drinking blood part. But the rest…I know how good that feels. And I miss it, too.”

Afterward, Spike couldn’t have said whether it was the alcohol or the unexpected emotion that led him to act. Maybe it was his not so repressed suicidal tendencies. Or perhaps it was only the loneliness that weighed on his shoulders like a load of heavy stones. Spike put his hands on Finn’s shoulders and, in one swift movement, pulled the man to him until their lips met.

Finn’s body stiffened. But he didn’t pull away. And as Spike’s tongue sought entry into Finn’s mouth, Finn’s lips parted, and he moaned, and he placed his own broad hands on Spike’s back.

They didn’t make it to the bedroom. In fact, at some point as they pulled the clothing off each other, Spike fell off the couch, onto Finn, and then they were rolling and writhing together on the carpet so enthusiastically that Spike would have rug burns on his knees the next day.

Finn had gained a pound or two, but his muscles were still thick and solid, and his flushed, sweaty skin felt so bloody nice. Spike straddled him and Finn clutched at Spike’s arse while Spike gripped his own cock and Finn’s together, allowing them to rub and slide in their combined precome. Finn’s eyes rolled back in his head and he arched his back and groaned as he came, splashing them both. Then Spike sped his movements and a moment later his own release tore through him, fast and sweet.

After, they lay on their backs on the floor beside each other, panting hard. Spike could hear the man’s heart battering in his chest. But when the beats slowed and Finn turned his head to look at him, Spike braced himself for repercussions.

Instead, Finn smiled. “That was a first for me.”

“Shagging a vamp? Thought you did that, back in Sunnydale.”

“I did, once or twice. I meant the guy part. I never had sex with a guy before.”

Oh. Spike shrugged. “Bloke, bird. Doesn’t much matter if you can get your end away, yeah?”

Finn laughed. “I don’t think a lot of people see it that way. The Army sure as hell doesn’t.”

“But you’re not in the Army now, are you?”

“No. I’m not.” Finn rolled on his side and reached over, stroking Spike’s chest with a look of wonder on his face. “You’re beautiful. Does that sound girly? But you are. I never noticed before. Not even when…. Well, you were just Hostile 17 at the time, you know? A monster.”

Spike closed his eyes, enjoying the feel of fingers trailing down his side, toying lightly with his nipples, petting tentatively at his damp and flaccid cock. “Still a monster,” he said quietly.

“Yeah, I guess.” Finn sighed, then sat up. “I better get home. I have to work tomorrow. I need to earn some cash if I’m gonna be able to afford presents for the family.”

“Can’t disappoint the kiddies on Christmas.”

“No, I can’t.”

Spike didn’t bother to dress, but he leaned back against the front of the sofa and watched as Finn pulled on his briefs and trousers and shirt and boots and coat. Finn walked to the door and started to open it, but then turned back to look at Spike. “You’re gonna leave soon, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. I expect so.”

“Where to?”

“Dunno. Someplace warm, maybe. Florida. Arizona.”

Finn nodded. “’Bye, Spike.” And he left.

***

 

The sky was a hard, bright blue. According to the telly it was fifty below zero with the windchill. It was warm enough in Spike’s flat, though, as he curled up on the sofa and drank his heated blood.

A heavy engine rumbled to a stop outside and metal door slammed. A few moments later there was a loud knock on the door to Spike’s flat. Spike padded over and opened it.

Finn stood there, blowing on his hands. “The heater in that truck doesn’t work worth shit. Can I come in?” he smiled.

This time they weren’t drunk, and they managed to get to the bedroom. Finn watched with wide, avid eyes as Spike stripped, and when Finn took his own clothes off, his cock was already standing up greedily.

“Decided you like blokes?” Spike asked.

Finn grinned. “Maybe I just have a thing for vampires.”

It was a bit clumsy between them. The whole thing was new to Finn and although he was eager as a puppy, he needed some instruction. Spike, on the other hand, hadn’t been penetrated for years, not since those last few weeks with Angel, just before the fight with Wolfram &amp; Hart. But Spike had a bottle of slick handy—he used it when he wanked—and Finn had lovely hands, strong and firm and warm, and the awkward bits made them both laugh, which felt good in itself. Spike came twice, once while Finn’s thick cock pounded against his prostate and then again when the man decided to give his very first blowjob. “I can’t figure out whether to be proud or envious,” Finn chuckled, glancing down at his own soft and sated organ.

“Part of the demon package, pet,” Spike said.

What surprised Spike the most was how tender Finn was after. He was a cuddler, it seemed, and they lay entwined in the warm bed together for ages, lazily tracing fingers over one another’s bodies. They spoke of Sunnydale. Finn kissed the spot on Spike’s chest where he’d once driven a plastic stake. Spike talked just a bit of what had happened in LA—a tale he’d told nobody until now—and Finn told about South America and the horrors he’d seen there.

It was a quiet evening, and sweet.

Spike walked Finn to the door when he had to leave, and they kissed, and Finn’s calloused hand brushed over Spike’s rump. “This has been really nice, Spike.”

Spike had to tilt his head to look up at him. He didn’t mind. “Get out of here, Finn. Go to New York or Chicago or Miami or Toronto. Stop drinking. Get yourself a bird. You’ll be all right. You can have…better.” He waved his arms around to show what he meant: better than him, better than his depressing flat, better than an overgrown cow town with horrible weather. Better than sitting and drinking and waiting to die.

Finn gave a half-smile. “Sure. Maybe I will. Thanks.”

Spike stood nude in his doorway, watching the broad back retreat.

***

 

His rent was paid until the end of the month, so he reckoned he might as well stay until then. On New Year’s Eve he could pack his few belongings into the Hyundai and drive off, heading wherever his whims led him.

You’d have thought that might have made him feel free.

On Christmas Day he read a book of poetry he’d nicked from the library. His soul didn’t give him a twinge over it. The last person who’d read this book was likely deader than he was, and he reckoned most people now had little interest in anything that arrived without gigabytes or wifi or LCD.

When he’d been human, children hadn’t been buried in useless plastic shite on this day, as they were now. But there had been parties and caroling and holiday feasts. People had exchanged cards and his mother had always purchased Christmas crackers. He remembered being perhaps nine or ten, listening to his parents laugh together as he stretched to his not very considerable full height to hang paper flowers on the tree that had been set up in the drawing room. It was one of the few times he could remember them being openly affectionate with each other and he’d watched them slyly from the corners of his eyes, wondering if he could get away with nicking one of the marzipan fruits that were strung on the branches. Thinking, too, that someday he’d find a woman as grand as his mother, and they’d fall in love, and their Christmases together would be splendid, with cakes and balls and roast goose and pudding.

Spike drank warmed cow’s blood for dinner.

He was sitting on the sofa, listening to Stiff Little Fingers but watching _It’s a Wonderful Life_ when, for the third time, someone knocked on his door. His breath caught for a moment and he could almost have sworn his heart went thump-thump.

“Merry Christmas,” Finn said, shoving a three-foot tall fir into Spike’s chest. “Here. Take this. I’ll be right back.”

Bemused, Spike set the tiny tree atop his rarely-used kitchen table. It was decorated with popcorn strings and tinsel, and there was a glittery star at the top. He liked the smell of it.

He’d just steadied it when Finn came tromping back in. Now his hands were full of brightly wrapped packages and a big paper sack. Smiling broadly, he arranged the packages under the tree. From the sack he produced a carton of Swiss Miss, a plastic package of marshmallows, and a paper plate covered in foil. He peeled back the foil to reveal iced cookies in the shapes of reindeer and bells. “Aunt Marian made them. She makes them every year. Secret family recipe.” He picked one up and happily bit the head off a snowman.

“So now you’re Father Christmas?”

“Just wanted to share some holiday cheer.”

“Shouldn’t you be spending the day with your family?”

Finn shrugged. “Already did. The kids have been up since six and now they’ve crashed from an overdose of sugar and presents. The grownups are all heavily into the nog and mulled wine already. I figure I did my time with them.”

“Look here, Soldier Boy. I know you haven’t had much of a hand in playing hero lately, but I’m not sodding Tiny Tim. I don’t want to be saved.”

“I didn’t come here to save you, Spike. I just…I just thought it’d be kind of fun. That’s all. I can leave if you want.”

Spike opened his mouth to tell him to go, but he couldn’t force the word out of his mouth. Couldn’t say anything, actually, past the thick lump that had formed in his throat.

Finn smiled and took another cookie, then poked the biggest package. “Here, open this one first.”

“I didn’t get you anything,” Spike mumbled.

A half an hour later, Spike sat on the sofa, surrounded by small mountains of brightly colored paper. He had a mug half-full of cocoa in one hand and an iced Santa in the other. On the battered coffee table in front of him was a pile of loot: Guitar Hero. A tiny mp3 player. A package of black t-shirts. A fifth of Scotch.

Finn sat on the floor in front of him, leaning up against Spike’s knees. He was clutching his own cup and he had a slight chocolately mustache that Spike yearned to lick away. He looked up at Spike and then gnawed nervously on his lip for a moment. “Uh, there’s one more thing I have for you.”

Spike cocked his eyebrow. “More pressies? This is already more than I’ve had in a century and half.”

“Yeah, well, this one…. You don’t have to take it. I mean, if you don’t want it, that’s okay. It’s just, well…here.” He dug into his trouser pocket and pulled out a small, square box, which he handed to Spike.

“Asking for my hand in marriage? That wouldn’t be legal in this state even if I were alive.”

“That’s okay. I’ve concluded I’m not really the marrying type.”

“One hundred and fifty years a bachelor, myself,” Spike said, turning the box over in his hand.

“C’mon. Open it.”

Spike did. Inside was a single key. Its head was black plastic and said “FORD.” Spike took the bit of metal out and held it in his palm. “You’re giving me your truck?”

Finn shook his head. “Not exactly. That’s a spare. I thought the truck was likely to make it farther down the road than your Hyundai. And we could rig up a camper shell in the back, give you a comfortable place to hang out during the day, if you needed it.”

“We?”

“That could be your present to me, Spike. Rescue me.”

For a very long time, Spike stared at the key. His mind was never a model of clarity anyhow, but now it tumbled and whirled like laundry in a dryer, and he tried to make some sense of the situation. Tried to make the right decision. Finally, as Finn waited, practically holding his breath, Spike whispered “Bugger this.” And he stuffed the key in his own jeans pocket and grinned down at Finn.

“Ever spent New Years in Times Square?”

 

_\---fin---_

 

 


End file.
